Janet Lessin

We Are All the 99 Percent

I’m writing you today to let you know about the most important, yet under-reported story developing in our society right now, Occupy Wall Street / Occupy Everywhere.

You might not have heard about this movement due to the corporate owned media barely reporting on this story, despite it truly being the most newsworthy event happening in the U.S. and around the world.

Occupy Wall Street started on September 17th in New York City with hundreds of “protesters” (it’s much more than a protest) taking up residence in a park near Wall Street and also close to the NY Federal Reserve. Within a week it had blossomed to over a thousand people marching to raise awareness that ordinary Americans, 99% of the country, have been systematically dominated, manipulated and financially suppressed by the top 1% of income earners. There are now many of thousands of “permanent occupiers” in this park, and the core occupation has spread to a second park in Manhattan.

One of their slogans, “We are the 99%” captures the movement in an easy to understand way. YOU are part of the 99% and most likely even the wealthiest people you know are part of that as well. In fact, it might surprise you just how UN-equal the money distribution is in the “United” States.

Take a look at this pie chart showing the wealth disparity in this (great?) country:

Image from this article at truth-out.org

Notice that the top 1 percent owns FORTY TWO PERCENT of the nation’s wealth. Nearly half of all wealth concentrated into a single percentile of the population. The next 4 percent own another twenty seven percent, bringing the total wealth ownership among the top 5% to a staggering SIXTY NINE PERCENT of this nation’s wealth.

Based on these numbers, maybe the slogan should be “We are the 95%” – but that’s just not quite as catchy.

Still, I would bet you a silver dollar that almost everyone you know falls into the lower 95% and not into the special club of the super-rich that the top 1-5% keep as exclusive as possible, while marketing the dream that if ordinary people work hard enough and invest wisely enough, they too can eventually make it into the “elite” club of the top 5 percent. This, of course, is a complete fabrication and manipulative lie. The top 5% don’t want us in their club. They only want to keep us working hard and taking on high interest debt which funnels straight up to their accounts, while they continue to borrow money at nearly zero percent interest and loan it back out to the bottom 99 percent.

What does this have to do with ascension? Quite a bit, actually. It has to do with knowledge becoming wisdom, leading to discernment, which leads to awakening, ultimately leading to self-empowerment.

This scares the heck out of the top 5% because they know that if just half of the bottom 95% really awakens to the fact that THEY have the power to withdraw their support from the corrupt system of finance, it will all collapse, leaving them with no power over your hearts and minds. They will do whatever it takes to prevent you from withdrawing your power and support from their system, and one of the more radical ways to keep you invested in their system is now starting to make inroads into the discussion about how to “save the economy.”

This radical idea is debt-forgiveness. This involves “forgiving” or officially eliminating all of the public debt that is currently “owned” by the huge banks and corporations. A “debt jubilee” is another phrase for this idea. Imagine for a moment if your mortgage, credit card debt, student loans, automobile loans, boat & RV loans, and other debts were cancelled tomorrow.

Seriously…please take a minute and really let this idea really sink in. Imagine that tomorrow the weight of that debt was suddenly, permanently lifted from your shoulders. How would you feel? How would you spend your days? Would you labor at the same job, or would you pursue something else that inspires you more?

Of course, the top 1-5% don’t like this idea very much, but they may have to resort to it as a form of damage control in order to keep their system intact. Even forbes.com recently ran an article about it, and if you search for “debt forgiveness” or “debt jubilee” you will find more articles advocating this idea. The top 1-5% knows that most people will eventually put themselves back into debt as long as the current financial system stays intact, so this may be the best option for them to take. It would certainly relieve a lot of pressure from the system and prevent some of the more extreme potentials from occurring.

Another potential is for the bottom 95% (remember, that’s you, me and pretty much everyone we know) to wage our own debt boycott. This would involve an organized boycott of all forms of debt, where instead of sending a monthly payment to the banks, you send them a letter explaining that you are not going to support them any longer. The letter would state that you now understand that the bank swindled you into signing away your home seconds after they used YOUR credit to create the funds to pay for your home. This also applies to your auto loans and all other loans. (The fact that all credit is created by the individual and NOT the bank is a deep subject that I cannot cover in this article.)

This debt boycott would need to apply to paying taxes, mortgage payments, credit card payments, car payments and all forms of economic slavery that do not provide the individual with any benefit whatsoever. It wouldn’t apply to utilities, food costs and normal day-to-day expenses.

A debt boycott is still a far-off possibility, but just the idea of it is horrible for the top 1-5% to contemplate because from their parasitic perspective it puts FAR too much power into YOUR hands, which is bad for their business. It is actually better for them to “bestow” a debt jubilee upon the general public, which will make them look like gracious benefactors instead of the enslavers that they truly are. If they “graciously grant” us debt forgiveness, they know that most of the bottom 95% will be back for more debt soon. If the bottom 95% instead boycotts the debt of all the “hallowed” institutions of finance, including the IRS, it would be the end of the world as they know it.

I share these ideas with you in the hopes that they will find fertile ground to grow and spread. Please read more about the “occupy everywhere” movement and consider lending some support to the occupation that is going on near you. It is happening all over the U.S. and the world right now, and it will continue to grow until it reaches a critical mass.

Now, you may find yourself wondering “what is their message?” or encountering corporate-owned media parrots trying to dismiss this movement because “they don’t have a singular message,” but that is actually a good thing. If this was simply “just another protest” about ending the Federal Reserve, ending the ongoing wars and bringing our troops home, reducing education costs, paying workers fair wages, or any one of a myriad of problems facing our society, this movement would not have the staying power that it does. The media can easily minimize or ignore any short-term demonstration. They will not be able to ignore thousands upon thousands of people gathered in hundreds of cities all standing in solidarity with each other for months and months.

This movement has only just begun, and it was a stroke of brilliant genius to make this occupation about bringing everyone together to stand up in unison and simply say “It is time for US to change our world!” We have to throw out the broken financial system, to fire and arrest corrupt politicians who have been bought by corporations, to end corporate personhood (please research that if you don’t know what it means), to take away the tools of domination by 1-5% of the super-wealthy over the rest of us.

A semi-official “Declaration of the Occupation” has indeed been released, and you can see it here: http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/ You can watch Keith Olberman reading this declaration here as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8o3peQq79Q

Some websites that will give you more insight into what is happening with this movement are:

http://occupywallst.org/

http://ampedstatus.com/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/category/occupy-wall-street/

http://www.meetup.com/occupytogether/ (Use this to find the occupation near to you so you can see for yourself what is really happening here.)

I see this movement is an aspect of the awakening to unity consciousness that is occurring within humanity. It is long over-due, and needs as much support and energy as we can give to it. I will be back soon with more metaphysically minded articles, but until then please tell your friends about this occupation and make this news known to those who would have missed it. The time to unite is NOW.

But now Americans are fighting back and there’s no telling where Occupy Wall Street can lead.

The irrefutable fact is that 99 percent of us are being screwed by the 1 percent who are looting our country (actually it’s more like the top 1/10 of one percent). So if you still harbor any doubts that Wall Street is the right target, here are 10 reasons to consider:

1. Wall Street caused the crash: Unless you are suffering from financial amnesia, you should remember that it was Wall Street’s reckless gambling that did us in. It was Wall Street banks and hedge funds, not home buyers, who created the enormous demand for high-risk mortgages to pool, to securitize, and to turn into Ponzi-like gambling structures with names like CDOs, CDO squared and synthetic CDOs. It was the money-grubbing rating agencies that blessed these pieces of garbage with AAA ratings. As a result, trillions of dollars of worthless toxic assets polluted our financial system. When the bubble they induced burst, our system crashed, causing 8 million working people to lose their jobs in a matter of months due to no fault of their own. Anyone who still blames low-income home buyers (who did not exactly approve their own loans), or regulations or Greece — or anyone other than Wall Street — should be checked for dementia.

2. The Wall Street crash directly caused the gravest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression: We’re three years into the worst jobs crisis since 1937. Upwards of 29 million people are out of work or have been forced into part-time jobs. The number of people who have been jobless for more than 26 weeks is at post-WWII record levels. And there’s no end in sight to this misery. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s representatives in Washington want us to focus on cutting public employment and public services to address the debt that Wall Street itself precipitated. WE wouldn’t have a debt crisis were it not for the bailouts, the crash, the lost jobs and the soaring cost of jobless benefits that can be laid at Wall Street’s door. (The debt was also caused by tax cuts for the rich, and the bankers certainly don’t want to talk about that.) For those diversionary debt tactics alone, Wall Street should be occupied until it pays to replace the jobs it destroyed.

3. Wall Street profited from the bailouts and remains unaccountable: Taxpayers provided trillions of dollars in cash and asset guarantees to the wealthiest bankers and hedge fund managers in the world. But nothing was extracted from them in return. Here’s one egregious example: Goldman Sachs paid $550 million in SEC fines for selling mortgage-related securities that were designed to fail so that a large hedge fund could bet against them. The securities failed as planned and the hedge fund pocketed $1 billion in profits. But after we bailed out AIG, Goldman Sachs picked up nearly $12 billion for similar bets that AIG had insured. Goldman Sachs collected 100 cents on the dollar and those dollars were ours.

4. The super-rich are getting richer: When the economy was crashing during 2008, high frequency traders in hedge funds and banks made upwards of $20 billion from the turmoil. This trading scam provided no redeeming value to our economy. Rather, it was a hidden tax on our sorrows — a transfer of funds from the many to the few. In 2010 the top hedge fund managers “earned” over $2 million an HOUR! The top 25 hedge fund managers took in as much as 650,000 teachers.

5. The super-rich are paying lower and lower taxes: While the government pleads poverty when asked to create a massive jobs program, our financial elites use every loophole available to avoid taxes. In 1995, the 400 wealthiest families paid about 30 percent of their income in taxes (after all deductions). Today their effective rate is less than 16 percent. And for what? What did society gain from their retained wealth? Not jobs, not debt reduction, only more Wall Street gambling.

6. Financial elites pay lower taxes than their secretaries: Venture capitalists and private equity fund managers, as well as some hedge fund elites, get a fantastic tax break called “carried interest” that allows them to pay a top rate of 15 percent on their income (rather than the 35 percent top rate regular people pay). This tax break, originally designed for small business partnerships, has made the mega-rich even richer. You might be wondering why this outrageous tax break continues for billionaires. The answer is simple: these elites are pouring money into Washington to make sure that Republicans and even some Democrats keep the loophole in place.

7. None of those who caused the crash have been prosecuted: Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund billionaire, is going to the hoosegow for insider trading. Bernie Madoff is in prison for life for his Ponzi scheme. And about 40 others have pleaded guilty to insider trading crimes. Yet none of these scoundrels, as immoral as they may be, had much to do with the financial crash. They didn’t peddle toxic mortgage-related securities. They didn’t push predatory loans. They didn’t rate garbage securities as if they were gold. None of these perps pumped up the housing bubble. Those who did are still roaming free, financially armed and dangerous.

8. Wall Street is much too big and its salaries are much too high: The financial sector is supposed to be an intermediary that turns our savings into productive investments. It’s not supposed to be a casino and it’s not supposed to dwarf the rest of the productive economy. But after years of deregulatory foolishness, it has metastasized to destructive levels. From the 1930s until the mid-1970s, financial sector employees earned the same as those in other sectors, relative to their skills and experience. That’s the way it should be. But since we embarked on the long march of financial deregulation and tax breaks for the super-rich, people working in the financial sector have seen their incomes skyrocket compared to everyone else. The bigger that gap, the more danger we face.

9. Wall Street still owns the regulators: When you put too much money in the hands of the few and when you deregulate finance, you get a financial casino. That’s what happened in the years leading up to the 1929 crash, and it happened again in 2008. During the New Deal we regulated the tar out of finance, ending their reign of speculative terror. And it worked for nearly a quarter of a century as financial crises virtually disappeared. Since financial deregulation reappeared over the last 30 years, there have been over 180 financial crises around the world. So you would think after 2008, we’d be back to reining in the bankers. But, no…our leaders are afraid to stifle “financial innovation” (See next point.) The Dodd-Frank bill is weak and getting weaker, thanks to intensive Wall Street lobbying. High government officials still believe that Wall Street can lead the nation forward. The kids are telling us that we should shut down the casinos now.

10. Financial innovation is a joke: Washington genuflects before the gods of financial innovation: the adjustable no-money down mortgages with resetting teaser rates, the synthetic collateralized debt obligations that turn garbage mortgages into AAA securities, the credit default swaps that are financial insurance policies without regulation, the nanosecond trading programs that flip millions of stocks per second while milking slower investors, and the myriad of ways to make enormous financial bets using little or none of your own money. They tremble at the thought of whispering anything that might stifle these highly profitable Wall Street inventions. They are wowed by trading measured in nanoseconds, by the alphabet soup of securities, by the dark pools of financial trading and most of all by financial billionaires and their lobbyists. But to paraphrase former fed chair Paul Volcker, the only real financial innovation in the last 25 years is the ATM machine. The rest are simply gambling games designed to enrich Wall Street’s elites who pocket the winnings and pawn off the losses on us.

Read the full story: http://www.alternet.org/story/152629/10_things_to_know_about_wall_street%27s_rapacious_attack_on_america?page=3

LETTER TO THE RULING CLASS

You control our world. You’ve poisoned the air we breathe, contaminated the water we drink, and copyrighted the food we eat. We fight in your wars, die for your causes, and sacrifice our freedoms to protect you. You’ve liquidated our savings, destroyed our middle class, and used our tax dollars to bailout your unending greed. We are slaves to your corporations, zombies to your airwaves, servants to your decadence. You’ve stolen our elections, assassinated our leaders, and abolished our basic rights as human beings. You own our property, shipped away our jobs, and shredded our unions. You’ve profited off of disaster, destabilized our currencies, and raised our cost of living. You’ve monopolized our freedom, stripped away our education, and have almost extinguished our flame. We are hit… we are bleeding… but we ain’t got time to bleed. We will bring the giants to their knees and you will witness our revolution!

Sincerely,
The Serfs.

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Two weeks ago, Occupy Wall Street was in one place – Manhattan – couldn’t get ONE mainstream news story, and looked to be in danger.